It is now recognized that protecting sun bathers exposed outdoors to the harmful rays of sunlight is desirable. Such protection is particularly important when a person is at the shore or in a beach environment for an extended period of time. In the past, protection has been provided for sun bathers with large beach umbrellas placed in the sand. Problems with the use of beach umbrellas are primarily wind related, i.e. a beach umbrella can be easily blown over and blown down wind posing a risk to other persons in its path.
Attempts have been made to provide anchoring mechanisms for beach umbrellas having a removable attachment to the ground or the umbrella to withstand wind or other forces that tend to remove it from its location. Applicant is aware of attempts to solve this problem by providing an anchoring mechanism at the base of the umbrella to bury in the ground to provide an anchor. One such attempt was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,850,564, which includes a base member and pin members used to drive a helical assembly into the ground. Other prior art devices include U.S. Pat. No. 1,736,177 following a helical assembly which is manually operated and lacks a driving means for driving it into the ground. Other prior art patents include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,152,495 Jacinto et al, 5,088,691 Procaccianto et al., 5,143,108 Kenney; 5,156,369 Tizzoni and 5,122,014 Genfan which provide for a number of relatively complicated features which fail to solve the problem in an efficient and economical way. None of these patents suggest the novel feature of the present invention.
Accordingly, it is therefore desirable to provide for a new and improved combination of sun shade device which includes a support and a helical anchoring device wherein a cranking device may be employed to drive the anchoring mechanism into the ground so that the sun shade device can be securely supported and which overcomes at least some of the disadvantages of prior art.